Using UIML to Improve Product Quality and Reduce Cost of Transitioning Prototypes to Production

Harmonia proposes an innovative approach to improving product quality and reducing time and cost of transitioning prototypes to production. This approach uses the User Interface Markup Language (UIML), an open specification language being standardized byOASIS, as a user interface design language that can be rendered to usability prototypes, tactical HCI code, and object model representations. The proposed approach centers on defining an enhanced, UIML-based user interface design process, and thendefining tool support needs for this process. The intent is to span the gap between usability and object-oriented software engineering by supporting rapid prototyping of user interfaces for usability engineering, while providing the ability to generateobject design data for the overall system's object model and tactical HCI code for deployment. UIML and its associated tools form a bridge between the user interface designer and the application modeler, allowing early and frequent integration of the userinterface design process and the application development life cycle. A process that simplifies the creation of user interfaces by facilitating the transition from usability prototypes to tactical HCI software will improve product quality and reducedevelopment time. This process will further allow access to multiple applications, possibly including legacy applications, through a single user interface, and also allow multiple user interfaces tailored to users' roles, responsibilities, even thecomputing devices used to access the application. Potential commercial applications are with any software development activity with a human/computer interface.